SAN JOSE, Calif. — Mark down Sept. 7 as the date Intel Corp. unofficially switches from frequency to parallelism as its main microprocessor philosophy. That's when President Paul Otellini will publicly demonstrate Intel's first dual-core processor as part of a keynote at the Intel Developer Forum (Sept 7-9).

Intel will host a smorgasbord of announcements during IDF covering areas including WiMax, ultrawideband and PC management technology for the digital office. But the most significant of these is likely to be the company's first multicore microprocessor, a server chip Intel declined to name.

Past IDF events have been known for their signature demos of super-cooled, ultra-cranked CPUs aimed at wowing the audience with a new frequency ceiling. Those days are over given the decline of performance-hungry applications and the rise of mobile computing.